The Return of Daily and Premier Events

Mike TurianTuesday, December 10, 2013

This Wednesday, December 11, following the scheduled downtime, Daily and Premier events will return to Magic Online. Worth Wollpert, the executive producer on Magic Online, announced their return, and today I will detail these events, their schedules, and changes we've made to better the play experience.

We expect the reintroduction of Daily and Premier events to spark discussion among our players. We pay attention to what our players tell us, and how they participate on Magic Online. As the community's play interests shift, we want Magic Online to keep up. So, we are easing back into our Daily and Premier Events; based on performance, as well as player interest and activity, we will continue to assess and adjust all events going forward.

Our Daily Events remain as four-round Swiss events with no Top 8. Prizes for these events also remain the same.

For those familiar with our previous Constructed and Limited Daily Events schedule, you will notice changes to the times they run and event size. The number of Daily Events has been adjusted slightly. Start Times and formats for Daily Events are now the same each day, making the schedule simpler. Daily Events run every hour on the hour. In addition, there are three Classic Daily Events that run on the half-hour.

The size of Daily Events has been changed to a minimum of 16 players, with a maximum of 128 players. We will continue to monitor Daily Event sizes and adjust them to improve play experience.

Pauper and Momir Basic remain as eight-player queues, and we are introducing both formats into the Premier Events rotation. We want to focus our Daily Events on formats that more closely reflect our face-to-face Magic organized play experience. Classic is an exception since we still want to offer this game experience as we prepare for the introduction of the Vintage format.

Return of Premier Events

We are increasing the frequency of Premier Events, as you will see in the schedule on the updated Events Calendar page. If you are unfamiliar with our Premier Events, these are special weekend-only tournaments that offer a more competitive play experience. There will be 31 Premier Events during weekends, which begin on Friday mornings at 9:30 AM Pacific Time and run every two hours throughout Friday and Saturday. Premier Events will conclude on Sunday evenings with the final event starting at 9:30 PM Pacific Time.

The size of Premier Events has changed to a minimum of 65 players and a maximum of 128 players. These changes continue our effort to manage event sizes and promote a more consistent event length that players can plan for.

In addition to the increased prizes, entry for Sealed Premier Events has been reduced by two Event Tickets.

We have greatly increased the number of booster packs awarded in Constructed and Sealed Premier Events. The payouts go deeper in the rankings (see the prize schedules below), and the event size changes ensure that a minimum of 25% of players in an event earn prizes. All Premier Events now have a matching prize schedule.

In addition to the increased prizes, entry for Sealed Premier Events has been reduced by two Event Tickets.

Additional Information

Theros Sealed Queues will be removed from the schedule with the return of Theros Daily and Premier Sealed Events after the downtime on Wednesday, December 11. Thursday Night Magic Online will not be returning to the schedule as other events fill the role of TNMO. Cards that were previously given out as part of TNMO will now be used in other places, such as part of the Magic Online Player Rewards program.

The Daily Decklists feature, located in the right sidebar of the Magic Online News and Updates page, will return to displaying decklists from all Premier and one Daily Event in each constructed format per day. Since Pauper doesn't have a Premier or Daily Event every day, two randomly selected Pauper eight-player queues will continue to be displayed.

Coming after the downtime next week on Wednesday, December 18, new players will find a small boost in cards they can receive as awards for New Player Events. These additional common and uncommon cards will help to supplement their original account kit collections.

As I mentioned earlier, we are easing back into Daily and Premier events, and we will continue to monitor play and feedback. We will make more adjustments to further improve our game offerings.